Month: May 2017

We are very pleased to be able to again offer the Sesquicentennial of Genesee County, NY — 1802 -1952 — this time as a download. It had previously been included (some would say “submerged) in our Genesee County Collection CD-ROM. Since we’ve discontinued that CD, this book now gets to stand on its own, and, perhaps, to get the attention it deserves.

This is a nicely done sesquicentennial book; there’s no question about that. The County clearly organized thoroughly for the celebration, and committees were devised to deal with all the various aspects of such a multi-day event. The book has a number of historical articles that are uniformly well-written and appear to be consistent with what we know of the history of the area. The list of sponsors of the Sesquicentennial runs several pages, and with the listings of the committees, one senses that a fairly high percentage of the 1952 population got their name into this book in one form or another. The pictures (black and white) are of good quality. The advertisements — as usual a useful glimpse of the local economy — are numerous and well-produced.

If you have a historical or family interest in Genesee County, you will probably want to have the Sesquicentennial of Genesee County NY to refer to. You can read more about it (and about our other Genesee County offerings) on the Genesee County page of our main website.

As we continue our process of migrating information from our discontinued CD-ROMs to availability as downloads, we are very happy to announce the availability of two Grange directories from Genesee County NY in the 1930s.

While the Grange still exists in some rural areas of the United States, the “Patrons of Husbandry” has been in a long decline since the 19th century in the United States. An organization that fulfilled several functions for rural farm families — it was a social organization, an organization for young people, a unified voice in speaking to legislatures, a charitable organization — in an age before telephones, radio, television, and the internet, it was vital. We think that these directories represented a resurgence of the local Granges due to the Great Depression, so they are social documents.

Because they list members and officers, as well as businesses catering to the agricultural sector, the Grange directories from Genesee County NY will be useful to genealogists tracing families in Genesee County, of course. Those interested in cultural history and social history will appreciate the clear view of agrarian life in upstate New York in the 1930s these represent.

Of a few Grange directories we’ve encountered, these are by some measure the most complete and likely represent a good picture of much of Genesee County at these points in time. The two that we have are the ones for 1934 and 1938. They previously appeared on our Genesee County Collection CD-ROM, which we have discontinued.

Genesee County, NY has been one of our favorites for a long time. Long-time customers will recall that we issued a CD-ROM called the “Genesee County Collection” some years ago. Even before that, we enjoyed collaborating with some of the folks in the Genesee County Genealogical Society when we republished an important book about the history of Western New York State.

Well, when we made the difficult decision to leave the CD-ROM business (today it’s really old technology) and take advantage of the ability to deliver files instantly via the internet, we had a lot of content on CDs that we needed to make available. Genesee County, NY, for some of the reasons listed above, was one of the earlier CDs we began converting.

So far, we’ve made two pieces of the CD-ROM available as downloads. Here they are:

The O-AT-KAN yearbook from 1953 at LeRoy Central School

The Genesee County chapter from French’s Gazetteer of the State of New York (1860)

Take a moment to glance as our Genesee County page on our main website for these two, and for other Genesee County material we have available as downloads. And check back soon, because we’ll be making more material from the CD-ROM available as downloads very soon.